Porridge

Beowulf: You Know More Than You Think! – Danny Bate

As a living soul of the twenty-first century, if you take a glance at the opening lines of Beowulf, the Old English poem, the chances are that you won’t be able to understand it. If anything, you may perhaps recognise its famous first word, hƿæt. This is absolutely fine, I should add; Old English is an old…

ART – Manon Parry

‘a visual stream of consciousness where your imaginary and erratic thoughts come to life.’

ONE POEM — Louise McStravick

We look up to her, I’ll teach you how
it works she says to the ram’s head, the birds eye
her mouth devouring snake heads

Acknowledging the River – Natalie Timmerman

“Everyone has anxiety.” “Be thankful for what you do have.” “Others have it worse.” When I sunk chin-deep into my anxiety, when I waded through life with a churning stomach, pale skin, and clenched jaw, these phrases thickened the current; they made the wading harder. Sure, they varied in words, tones, and intentions, but they…

ONE POEM — Diane Fahey

a frieze of lacemakers

intricately at work
beneath the bay’s

array of scintilla –

Oysters – Lynne Golodner

The oysters arrived on a paper plate, craggy half-shells pooling ocean brine. A server slung a basket of napkins, vinegar and cocktail sauce on the table. Dan lifted a shell and slurped. I forked one and bit into the softness, closing my eyes. I breathed in through my nose to taste more fully. These were…

ONE POEM – Stephen House

wondering why
create measures to gauge the seriousness
of fragile moments

The Unbearable Brightness of Being – Laura Swan

I’ve taken photography up again for the sake of my fictional avatar. She’s about to start university in Dublin and, unbeknownst to her, she will buy a camera in her second term in an attempt to digest, dissect, and process the world around her – a world that has become intensely disorientating, a world she…

ONE POEM — Florence Campbell-Gray

My name is June; you have to say it like ‘sex’
softly bright
like it’s a pink toaster

COMFORT FOODS // Reheating Leftovers – Bojana Stojcic

Reheating Leftovers And there you wereletting the world know you’d betemporarily unavailableagainthinking, All I can do now iswait for the clocks to tickhalf past six because thenthe door is opened andstays open untilthe blood has been takenout of the bodiesgiven a brief stirput back in or your hate of the present brings you to the…

Right There — Lily Blacksell

‘Your place or mine?’ he typed, adding then deleting a winky face and pressing send.

‘Neither,’ she replied very quickly, adding ‘obviously.’

COMFORT FOODS // Tiffin — Serena Alagappan

Tiffin clangs like bells,
collapses as it climbs,
tiffin holds okra, paneer,
sambar, and lemon rice.

ONE POEM – Jenny Wong

The fish
fillets are thawing
for their pan-fried debut.

Growing Young – Eve Davies

If there’s one thing one can observe in a residential care home, it is the necessity of humour throughout life. It is true that the human body ages in a cycle. Through life we travel the circumference of a circle. We begin a reliant baby, we start to learn, we grow up, become an adult,…

ONE POEM – Sally Michaelson

giddy with the scent
we pipette the peppermint
into the mixture

COMFORT FOODS // Sour moon – Ieva Grigelionyte

The first important thing in making fermented cabbage is to choose a good cabbage head.

ONE POEM – Emma Wells

a cheeping beak breaks forth
scenting balmy air:
swirls of hyacinths waft
in warm, hour-less days –

Frickin’ Lion – Ann Kathryn Kelly

Olive the (lion) dog. Image by Andrea Farrow, via Instagram The mane streams behind the dog as it tears across weathered gray floorboards. “Frickin’ lion.” The seven-second Instagram reel auto-loops on my Thursday lunch hour and I become obsessed with this dog that I later find out belongs to my colleague Jessica’s sister, Andrea. I…

Umbrology – Brian McNely

I stepped off the plane in Helsinki – airport code HEL – and found a restroom. Standing at a urinal, I heard birdsong piped through overhead speakers: odd, soothing, out of place. The train to downtown Helsinki departs from a giant, cool tunnel many meters below street level. The platform is nearly empty. Massive faux-tapestries…

POETRY & ART – Katie Hourigan

Blood orange, the pith and peel of it,
sluicing into nails and the cuts
I hadn’t known were there.

ONE POEM – Aimee Nicole

How many fried eggs do I have to eat to heal these broken bones?

Two Cultures, Again – Kate Venables

I am a student in a creative writing programme, a mature student, from a professional background as an epidemiologist. Amongst ourselves, we students don’t really talk about ‘creativity’. We talk a lot about craft and sometimes we talk about ourselves and the way in which how we feel affects our writing. But rarely about ‘creativity’…

Dances with Rabbits – Walker Thomas

I stood under the alligator juniper that shaded my tent in the oak woods. Effie squatted between my feet. In The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade called his receptionist Effie. But the Effie at my feet was no lady. I called her F. E. Cottontail in my journals. Cottontails are coprophagous – literally, Fecal Eating. That…

ONE POEM – Miriam Gauntlett

last night i carved open
a tree in the yard and
at the centre of the
trunk was a small
knife

ONE POEM — Danae Younge

The trees are prettier this time of year, limp—
gowned in sweet milk stuck to our tongues.

Missing Woman – Katie Hunter

In early October 2020, my partner Greg and I drove at sunrise to Zion National Park in southern Utah. On the way I swigged coffee and snapped photos of sandstone cliffs dip-dyed red by the sun. They dwarfed what I’d imagined while planning our pandemic-adapted vacation – a national park tour via road trip, starting…

ONE POEM — Anisha Jackson

It was the temperamental radio,
the cats with full bellies,
the hilarious stench of fuel

Lemons – Victory Witherkeigh

“You made it, Grandma!” I said as I gave her a hug. The gold tassel swished in my face from the graduation cap I hadn’t removed yet. “I’ve been to all your graduations, Iha,” she replied in a huff, “And, I’ll be at the next one.” I gripped her hand as she steadied herself with…

POETRY & ART – Amber Rollinson

I try bleaching the sun
using liquid soda crystals
but the sky turns yellow too

ONE POEM — Finola Scott

breathe and /hold
lungs and belly
moon balloon full

I Can’t Recall a Time Without War – Casey Canright

The weeks that followed exploded into a patriotic frenzy. Red, white, and blue dotted every neighborhood – even our own. Old Navy’s Fourth of July T-shirts reemerged for the last few weeks of September. Dad brought home a flag – taller than me – which I demanded be hung by the front door, just like…

TWO POEMS – Patrick Landy

the slow inflections of the wind
where rivers run like scars.
The moon hangs quietly
in the blackened air, halved and emptied, decaying since dusk

ONE POEM – Ava Patel

Here lie abandoned gyro crusts and Bundt cake crumbs.
Your fingers shine with olive oil grease

It’s Always Going Away: Losing the Places We Love – Nina Smilow

New York is often unfairly maligned for being unfeeling, but that’s just what we call uncontrollable things, which the city is. It tumbles on, transforming a million times over the course of a decade before remaining stagnant for far too long. Occasionally, shifts rise rapidly from seismic events. I’ve seen sudden pivots in the wake…

ONE POEM – J. Freeborn

I dreamed of teeth
cracking teeth walnut

shells my cheek
hot on your back

TWO POEMS – DS Maolalai

waking
at midnight
to piss
on the sand dunes
and the sky overhead
like a badly
scratched frying pan.

Heaven-Born Things – Sally Gander

What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.Marcus Aurelius ‘It’s about a third full,’ I say, clutching the mobile phone to my ear as I hang my head into the water tank, my voice bouncing off the metal sides and echoing back at me. ‘Does the pipe…

Midnight Games – Madeehah Reza

It’s not that she wasn’t happy for her sister, far from it. Nadia only wished she could hold on to her for a little longer.

Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner that Held Them: Managing Isolation and Becoming the Fabric of a Place – Joanna Mason

January and the New Year are often dreaded in their insistence that we look back on what we have achieved, or what we meant to. This year, the looming of March feels the same, with its marking of the anniversary of the initial lockdown. It is easy to be hard on the progress you have…

FLASH FICTION – Kirsty Crawford

I sway and I spin, I smile. Sometimes even in perfect moments, you begin to feel the cold creep in.

ONE POEM — Joseph Eastell

half six stampedes into our room
where we stretch across the kingsize,
urban sprawl nibbling at the greenbelt.